Made by international award-winning documentary maker David Sington, The Flaw tells the story of the credit bubble that caused the financial crash. In October 2008 a humbled Alan Greenspan admitted to the US Congress that he had been mistaken to put so much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets, and that he had failed to anticipate the self-destructive nature of wanton mortgage lending and the housing and credit bubble it generated. Taking for its title Greenspan’s description that he’d found a flaw in his model of how the world worked, The Flaw attempts to explain the underlying causes of the crisis in more depth than any documentary to date.

The film presents an original and compelling account of the toxic combination of forces that nearly destroyed the world economy through some of the world’s leading economists, including housing expert Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and economic historian Louis Hyman, as well as Wall Street insiders and victims of the crash including Ed Andrews – a former economics correspondent for The New York Times who found himself facing foreclosure – and Andrew Luan, once a bond trader at Deutsche Bank now running his own Wall Street tour guide business.

The Flaw shows how excessive income inequality in society leads to economic instability. As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, said: “When you have growing inequality, typically your level of consumption goes down. In the United States we said to those whose income was not going anywhere: don’t worry, continue to spend as if your income was going up. But the only way you do that is through debt and that particular model has been broken.” At a time when economic theory and public policy is being re-examined this film reminds us that without addressing the root causes of the crisis the system may collapse again and next time it may not be possible for governments to rescue it.

Sponsored by G.A.L.A. and the Wolfeboro Public library, The Flaw screens Friday, April 27th at 7pm and admission is free. The library is located at 259 South Main Street, Wolfeboro, NH. You can preview the film’s trailer and learn more about its making at http://theflawmovie.com/index.html. For more information call G.A.L.A. at 603-539-6460 or email contact@galacommunity.org.

This one-hour, afternoon webinar is organized by a group called Circle Forward. It's on G.A.L.A.'s calendar because we use consent-based governance called "Dynamic Governance". We think it offers some great tools to help groups make decisions and work together. This webinar would be great for anyone who is part of a team or group, and especially if you are interested in volunteering on one of G.A.L.A.'s many committees and board! The webinar is on the third Thursday of every month.